Thursday, March 7, 2013

I hate Pinterest February Roundup

The first [reason] is that the majority of Pinterest users are women and the second is that the majority of pins are about, as follows: diet/exercise, makeup/clothes, crafting, “inspiration” for when you fall off the wagon, weddings, and home decor.

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Let’s take a step back to the end of the 18th century and check in with Mary Wollstonecraft. In Chapter Four of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she makes the persuasive argument that women and men are equally capable of reason and intelligence. Pause for a second while you’re out voting, and owning property, and wearing pants and consider that this was a revolutionary concept at the time: people- — both men and women — believed that the female brain was not wired for higher thought. Wollstonecraft suggests that the reason this appears to be the case is because women are improperly educated, that “understanding, strictly speaking, has been denied to [them]” through the forced acquisition of trivial skills like needlepoint, painting, and ornamentation in lieu of cultivating the ability to think.

I may just be one of a very few women who do not obsess over the internet phenomenon that is Pinterest. In fact I avoid the thing like the plague. Oh yeah, I looked at it. Then I started feeling unbelievably guilty.

I hate Pinterest. I hate what it’s done to mommy hood and what it’s done to the psyche of women around the world. Pinterest has helped Mommyguilt reach levels not possible before. Why? Because it shows us what we’re NOT doing, or what we think we SHOULD be doing or what we CAN’T do.